Sunday, December 30, 2012

Not long ago I learned to my delight that my book of poems Beaver Soul will be published in 2013 by Finishing Line Press of Kentucky. Beaver Soul was written in 1992, the early part along the Haw River in Saxapahaw, on what I called my poetry rock near a beaver dam. The second part was written in Russia, where I spent two months, July and August, that year, the first month in two Houses for Creativity, Peredelkino, near Moscow, and Komarovo, near St. Petersburg, and the second month in the Kostroma region, in Sharya, then in the Mezha District, in the village of Gorka, and later in Kostroma. The final poem in the book was written in Devon, near the River Teign, where I was able to spend another month.

The Kostroma Writers’ Organization published Beaver Soul [Bobrinaya Dusha] in Russian translation in 1997. I had wanted to see it published in English, so finally 21 years after it was written, it will come out in English. I’m going to give you my Russian editor’s preface and the first poem, to give you a feeling for the book. It will sell for $12, and if you order ahead of time [Details when I know them], it’s only $2 postage. Welcome to the world of Beaver Soul.

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Russian Editor’s PrefaceA Smile from Across the Ocean

When he smiles, a person causes kindness to come into being for himself and for others. People say that a smile helps us be happy. I’m thinking about this, having received an interesting photograph and trying to see across the ocean a face not yet known to me, using my imagination to fill in what her character is like, what her situation in life is, and it seems to me that somewhere once before I’ve seen this woman from America. I can hear her voice in the lines of her letter, her speech which brings with it a long ago melody, maybe from the last century. Just now, on that continent lying on the opposite side of the water, in the state of North Carolina, it’s a different time of day. Probably Mrs. Judy Hogan is thinking about her children. There are three of them, already adults now, living in different cities and her responsibilities as a mother haven’t decreased, although in her letters sent to Kostroma, she doesn’t often mention them. Even once I thought: if my mama composed such long letters, she would definitely have mentioned each one of her eleven children, which one she was happy about, which one she’d reprimanded, which one she worried about, feeling in her heart that all was not okay. If you will, she wouldn’t have considered or worried her head about journeys, or if so, it would, for her, have been better to visit her grandchildren. I will think about this again later on when meeting with the mother of Judy Hogan, who is a famous mountain climber.

But Judy’s smile and her confessions about another life and other interests, suggest that there is another psychology, another understanding of the idea of being human. “When I was young, I was very serious, but, as my life has gone on, I have learned to laugh more and more. I think my own struggles and my difficulties and troubles have tended to mean I had to laugh more and more.”

A person is always more important and better than other people realize, than what the people immediately around him know, and he himself doesn’t know everything about himself, if he doesn’t manage to break out from a conventional way of life, if he doesn’t take into account, doesn’t realize all his possibilities, and, because of that, he isn’t even able to say what the chief thing about him is. Obviously, my new acquaintance’s varied activities and communications with others helped her to be self-confident and to feel emancipated. The letters and books of Judy Hogan share her character, her artistic taste, her organizing ability, attract attention to her reflections about creativity, conceptions of what it is to be a human being enjoying all the signs of freedom and independence, her methods of working with people of different ages interested in creative writing.

The letters, books, collections of poetry of Judy Hogan, and the manuscript of poems only just now appearing to the author of these notes, strengthened his interest and involved him thoroughly in a conversation about “eternal questions,” about creativity, about masters of world literature. We were tactful and patient, we didn’t have to reproach one another for not understanding or not agreeing as to the value of the authoritative works of the last and present centuries. We had apparently already mastered the idea in the words of Pushkin from his article on Radishchev: “there is no ability to persuade in slander, and, where there is no love, there is no truth.” Now I know: in our joyful conversations about “the gift” that is given to others and about how, in getting closer to the truth through getting acquainted with the loved thing, which breaks through in the love for one’s fellow countrymen, we influenced each other.

The distance, the lack of time, and the language barrier slowed down our communication by letter. But literature ennobled it and made it more complex. It gave us the possibility to push farther our understanding, the stories about these subjects in our letters, and it determined the orientation of our discussions. It opened the perspective and inclined us to realistic thoughts of a project for cultural ties between the sister cities. Now it’s impossible to mention all the subjects of our letter dialogues across the ocean. Of course, we didn’t neglect to mention Chekhov, Turgenev, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Bunin, Akhmatova, Esenin, Tsvetaeva. It turned out that we spoke only of those who are already well known in America, but now she’s probably also oriented to some other authors, because I reminded her of them.

She comforted us, she gave us hope, both in the idea that there are still people with the capacity for reading and understanding Pushkin and who are striving to know some Russian writers besides those famous in America. There appeared in the dialogue that we had aspirations which united us, in which neither the ocean, nor the language barrier, nor our different styles of life were able to be hindrances. Judy Hogan agrees with me in this.

So we “closed ranks” in everything, in our individual lives and our past, and what was thought by others, in different decades, in different centuries, on the different shores of the ocean and on different sides of the earth, in villages and cities, in various forms of society. From one family home we are drawn invisibly to go to another.

Judy’s as free as the sun (she has written about this in her poems). She confirms: “We are changed, and we give ourselves up to the joy of living, to the attractive stars. In the darkness the fireflies are drawn toward the light and they open places where we feel even more at home.”

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Sometimes we have to be very patient indeed before we can speak our truth.

–The Telling That Changes Everything I.

Among the heirs of art, as at the division of the promised land, each has to win his portion by hard fighting: the bestowal is after the manner of prophecy, and is title without possession. To carry the map of an ungotten estate in your pocket is a poor sort of copyhold. And in fancy to cast his shoe over Edom [Palestine] is little warrant that a man shall ever set the sole of his foot on an acre of his own over there...

The most obstinate beliefs that mortals entertain about themselves are such as they have no evidence for beyond a constant, spontaneous pulsing of their self-satisfaction–as it were a hidden seed of madness, a confidence that they can move the world without precise notion of standing-place or lever.

–Daniel Deronda, George Eliot, p. 213.

You see, the ecstasy the true self experiences is outside time, and it’s contagious.

–The Telling That Changes Everything II.

Like an Old Testament prophet, I see visions.

Because spring arrived so recklessly early,

in March, no rain mid-April gives me a

queasy feeling. How coax seedlings to

fuller life in hot, dry conditions? If spring

weather makes growing food more difficult,

what will summer bring? I water, weed,

protect from sudden cold. The same spring

heralds my book five months early. Farther

out are the skeptics, the small-minded

critics, but near me are people who want

to be close, know me better through my

book, and even when I teach a chicken

workshop. What is it I give these readers

and students? Validation for their human

longings, their desire to live as close as

I do to the world of creatures and plants,

both wild and tamed? It’s not a passive

life. The natural world is very active

and inexplicable. Why suddenly does

nitrogen-producing clover spring up

everywhere about this place, or a large

patch of purple flowers that look like

harebells arise from a familiar weed?

Then there’s the grass I’ve never seen

which has taken over part of the orchard.

I have in my pocket, like George Eliot

did, “the map of an ungotten estate.”

It makes me both strange and beloved. It

gives me sight of trouble brewing like the

ominous black sky that precedes tornadoes,

leaves its path of destruction but no rain.

How does one human being help hold back

the woes of desolation and dismay that

descend, despite our best efforts? By belief

that the More in our human nature’s still

there, will always be there if we stay

attuned to that deeper, wiser chord we

have the ears to hear, the vision to

recognize and obey; that leads us into our

own imagined promised land either

before or after we die.

***

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Chinese medicine used it in Han Dynasty, 206 BC-AD 23. In the West it was used to heal inside and outside wounds, called Woundwort and Heal All.

About Me

I write mystery novels, poetry, autobiographical books, reviews and articles. My Hoganvillaea Farm provides about half my food. I sell eggs and figs. My newest book, Grace: A China Diary, 1910-16 came out April 12, 2017. The next Penny Weaver mystery comes out June 1,2017: Political Peaches. Formaldehyde, Rooster (2016, Nuclear Apples? The Third Penny Weaver Mystery, 2016. The Sands of Gower: The First Penny Weaver Mystery (2015), Haw (2016): The Second Penny Weaver Mystery. Killer Frost (2012) and Farm Fresh and Fatal (2013) will be re-published in 2017 This River: An Epic Love Poem came out from Wild Embers Press in 2014. You may order all the books from me, as well as my poetry chapbook Beaver Soul (Finishing Line Press, 2013) and This River:An Epic Love Poem (2014): PO Box 253, Moncure, NC 27559 mysteries cost $16, with postage, $19;Grace costs $28, $30 if mailed. Beaver Soul is $13; $16 if mailed. This River is $15 if picked up, $18 if mailed. My PMZ Poor Woman's Cookbook: Vegetarian Recipes for Survival and Health in the Menopausal and Post-Menopausal Years. $10; $13 if mailed. I hold the copyright to all the material on my blog, which I've written.